Anthroposophical Spiritual Science and Medical Therapy

Schmidt Number: S-4473

On-line since: 7th April, 2009

Lecture IX
Curative Eurythmy (for physicians)

Dornach, April 19, 1921

What I have to say to you today about
eurythmy will require the aid of the findings of physiology
and the like. How this should happen will no doubt become
clear to you as a matter of fact in the course of your work.
Precisely when investigating a bodily and spiritual process
such as the one which occurs in doing eurythmy, we cannot do
otherwise than point to deeper physical and spiritual
connections.

To begin
with, we will look at that extra-human cosmic process usually
considered only with respect to its external details and not
explored with respect to what is inwardly active. Just
consider that “earth formation” means that a
formative tendency is working in from the collective
planetary sphere and that in addition a formative impulse
into the earth emanates from what lies even beyond the
planetary sphere, through continually in-streaming cosmic
forces which manifest themselves in individual force entities
on the earth.

We can come
to understand these cosmic forces (this can also include
everything which I previously said about radiations) by
considering them as working towards the center and forming
from outside what is on the earth and in the earth. It is,
for example, a fact that the metals of the earth, in their
entirety, are not primarily formed by forces inside the earth
but are placed into the earth from out of the cosmos. These
forces, which work through the ether (from the planetary
sphere, not from the planets, for then they would be working
centrally again — the planets are there to modify them)
we can call formative forces, the formative forces
working from outside. They encounter forces which in man and
in the earth receive the formative forces, consolidate them
and gather them around a center so that the earth can come
into being. Thus we can call these forces the
consolidating forces
(see diagram).

They are
present in man as forces which plastically shape the organs,
whereas the other forces, the formative forces, push the
organs, as it were, from the spiritual-etheric world into the
physical world.

This is a
process which, if I could say it this way, is almost palpable
in the contrast between the pushing forces of magnesium and
the forces of fluorine which round off. It is a process which
can be found everywhere; in the teeth it occurs from below
upwards, rounding itself above, and it also occurs from front
to back and from back to front, and from above to below,
rounding itself below. Again you can get an almost palpable
comprehension of this process if you imagine that with the
tendency to push something spherical towards the back, from
outside towards the inside, something is formed there, and
this is opposed by a sphere-forming process from below to above
(see drawing, red).
Between these processes there is
mediation by the secretory processes, including also the
assimilation of what is secreted by other processes; in
short, everything one can call secretory processes in the
widest sense because, after all, assimilation depends on the
reabsorption of something which is secreted towards the
inside. Thus what is active in between can best be called
secretory processes.

Again you can
have a palpable comprehension of such a secretory process if
you think that, on the one hand, something is present here
which wants to continuously excrete carbon
(see figure, orange)
and that there is something
else which assimilates it again in the formation of carbonic
acid (white) through breathing from the front. Then such a
secretory process continues behind it.

If you go
still further down into the metabolic-limb process, you have
a real consolidation process. However, this
consolidation process is also present in the other direction.
You can see it everywhere, and you can have a palpable
experience, as it were, if you look at the eye. As embryology
shows us, it is formed from outside towards the inside, and
is consolidated from within; the formation is internalized.
The development of the eye depends on this
(see following diagram, orange).
Then as we go on
to the soul and spirit in man, and therefore to the organs of
the soul and spirit, to the sense organs, we see this
consolidation process spiritualizing itself — really
ensouling and spiritualizing itself in perception. This, in a
way, is the descending process which leads to the formation
of organs
(see figure on p. 130).
We find the perceptual process, or objective perception, at the
lower end.

If this
develops further, then perception goes back towards what is
consolidating; if what is consolidating becomes conscious it
becomes Imagination. If Imagination develops further and
becomes conscious through the secretory process, it becomes
Inspiration. And if Inspiration develops further towards the
formative process and consciously encounters the formative
process and thus understands formations, then it becomes
Intuition. One can thus develop these stages of soul life
from objective perception to Imagination, Inspiration and
Intuition.

This process,
developed in the soul, is based on the process of becoming,
but as you can see
(in the figure on p. 130),
it is the reversal of the process of becoming. One
goes towards what has become, and ascends into becoming again
in the reverse direction. Forming goes in a descending
direction. One climbs up in the reverse direction and goes
towards becoming. So, what one develops as perception and
cognitional forces in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition
always has a counter-effect in the creative forces which
express themselves in the formative forces, the secretory and
consolidation processes.

From this you
will see that something is active in the human organism in a
reverse direction in creating and becoming from what one gets
into if one ascends in cognition. This will show you that it
is true that in Imagination we come to the same forces which
assert themselves — without our consciousness —
in growth phenomena, in formative growth phenomena. If we
ascend to Inspiration, we come to forces which inspire man
from without and thoroughly shape him in breathing, and which
weave themselves into the plastic-formative forces and
elaborate them. And if we ascend to Intuition, we ascend to
the active entity (Agens) which enters our plastic
forms as substantial beingness from the outer world.

Thus you see
that we are taking hold of man as he shapes himself out of
the cosmos here, and if we use the findings which we have
acquired in anatomy or physiology and illumine them with what
is given us here, then we will begin to understand the organs
and their functions. So this is an indication for the
understanding of organs and their functions.

Those forces
which continually work plastically on man, which normally
shape him through, live, on the other hand, in the
consonantal movements. These, as I said yesterday, call forth
the unconscious forces of Imagination, namely a kind of
streaming-through of the organism. Here you can see how
consonantal eurythmy takes hold of deficient
formative-plastic forces in man and leads them over into the
correct formation.

One could
observe a child and notice that the body form is either
deficient or is proliferating too strongly. What does it mean
that the form is proliferating too strongly? It means that
the form is working centrifugally and making the head big,
and because it is getting too big, it does not get around to
permeating itself with forces of Imagination in the right
way. So these forces need to be supplied; one lets the child
do consonantal eurythmy.

There is a
question here about “a two-year old boy with a large
head who is apparently healthy otherwise, not
hydrocephalic.” — In properly used consonantal
eurythmy, you have an antidote to overcome this. This is
where a thorough observation of deeper morphological aspects
points precisely to a treatment with eurythmy.

Then there is
“a 12-3/4-year old boy whose longitudinal growth is
clearly retarded, with no organic findings, he has worms, is
intelligent but easily becomes mentally fatigued.”
— This is an extraordinarily interesting complex of
symptoms which all point to insufficient unconscious forces
of Imagination, and which indicate that the plastic organ
forces are rampant because there are not enough inner, or
soul-, plastic forces. The plastic forces of the soul are
also the ones which destroy parasites; if they are
insufficient, it is no wonder that he has worms. So the
antidote is to let him do consonants in eurythmy.

These
connections show you exactly where you have to intervene with
eurythmy. Even when these symptoms occur in a somewhat
concealed way, eurythmy can still have an extraordinarily
favorable effect if, in addition, one deals with the matter
in a material, therapeutic way.

Here is an
interesting question which of course I will have to answer
only in principle. If complications occur, they would have to
be specifically considered, but, even if something else has
to be added, what I have to say here is to the point. —
“I have a 5-year old child as a patient who lost a lot
of blood from a bullet wound; two years ago his joints
started to get deformed. He also has signs and symptoms which
later lead to chlorosis (iron deficiency anemia) and the like
in adults. How could one deal with this
therapeutically?”

Here you have
joint deformation. This is a working outwards of plastic
forces which cannot stay inside anymore, and which radiate
outwards so that they leave man instead of working inside
him. They are radiated back most effectively precisely
through the use of consonantal eurythmy, for with it you
summon the objectively effective Imaginations which offset
deformities. In the future (the question already quite
correctly points to this), people in general will
increasingly tend to deformities in manifold ways because
they will not be able to form a normal shape with the
unconsciously active forces anymore. Man is becoming free,
and eventually he will be free even with respect to shaping
his own form; but then he will have to be able to do
something with this freedom. Therefore, he has to go over to
the creation of Imaginations, which always counteract
deforming tendencies.

Here we have
deficient objective Imagination, but one might also have to
deal with deficient objective Inspiration, which manifests
itself through (if I might be permitted to express it in this
way) a ‘deforming’ of the rhythmic system. This deforming
of the rhythmic system expresses itself especially where the
objective Inspiration, which goes inwards, does not meet the
circulation rhythm in the right way. And here one works in a
normalizing way if one uses vowel eurythmy. This vowel
eurythmy also works on inner irregularities but now not
accompanied by morphological changes, just as consonantal
eurythmy works on morphological deformities, or on tendencies
to develop morphological deformities.

Earlier I
said that it might be necessary to support something like
this if it occurs in a particularly radical fashion, as in
the deforming of joints which we just discussed. Then it is
necessary to therapeutically assist this process of
consonantal eurythmy which, through this Imagination,
stimulates the inner breathing of the organs which go from
outside to inside, and which are situated beyond the
intestinal walls: the lungs, kidneys and liver. It is a fact
that if one does consonantal eurythmy, then especially the
back part of the head, lungs, liver and kidneys begin to
sparkle and scintillate, which shows the soul and spirit
reaction to what is done outwardly in the moving of
consonants. The whole man becomes a shining being in these
organs, and the movements made outwardly are always met by
shining movements within. Especially with certain consonant
movements a whole shining reproduction of the kidneys'
secretion processes occurs; one gets a picture of the whole
secreting process of the kidneys. This then works over into
unconscious Imaginations, and the entire process is the same
one I have described as being under the influence of cuprum;
it is the same process.

Here is an
occasion to draw the physicians' attention to the fact that
there are people who have certain forms of illness.
Yesterday, these forms of illness were brought towards me
again in the form of extraordinarily admired colored
drawings, and people asked whether they were particularly
occult. Of course they are occult in a certain way, but it is
extraordinarily difficult to talk to people about these
matters because such wonderful drawings are actually
objectively-fixed kidney-luminescence (Nierenleuchten), they
are an objectively-fixed urine formation process. If this
urinary process becomes a luminescent process in an abnormal
way in certain pathologically disposed people — if a
certain congestion of urinary secretion occurs (a purely
metabolic disease) and if the kidneys then begin to shine,
and if a particular introverted clairvoyance sets in —
then they begin to draw furiously. This always turns out to
be beautiful, at least in an external, formal sense. The
applied colors are always beautiful. Of course, people are
not satisfied if one tells them: you have really painted
something very beautiful there — that is your congested
urinary secretion. — I can assure you that obstructed
urinary secretion and suppressed sexual desires, which may
also bring about irregularities of the metabolism, may well
be presented to you by mystically inclined personalities as
deeply mystical drawings and paintings, but much that appears
in the world in this way needs to be recognized as symptoms
of just barely tolerable pathological human conditions.

You see,
anthroposophically oriented spiritual science is not
mysticism in the way many people understand this, because it
does not delude itself about matters such as the ones just
characterized. Rather, it investigates them and then people
are offended. For example, they were already offended when I
went so far in public lectures as to indicate (even though
the artistic productions were poems and not drawings) that
the beautiful poetry of Mechthild von Magdeburg or of St.
Theresa are copies, or the inspirational reflexes, of
processes which arise through restrained sexuality. Of
course, people find it disagreeable if one describes a
Mechthild on Magdeburg or a St. Theresa as personalities with
a strong sexuality which they suppressed because it became
too strong for them, and that their beautiful poetic
creations were then the reaction to certain metabolic and
circulatory processes arising from such a suppression. Seen
from a higher point of view, this phenomenon leads deeply
into the secrets of existence, but one must be able to
elevate oneself to such a view.

One should
have at least an inkling of these peculiar processes which
light up as inner processes when one does eurythmy. If what
is hidden in a poem is eurythmized, as I showed you
yesterday, if a beautiful poem is read and eurythmy is done
to it in an appropriate way with consonants or vowels, then
this also is accompanied by something else — then an
inner, silent speaking joins what is done there externally in
the eurythmy movements. And, if the process is not sweltered
out in sultry poems, but if the process simply accompanies
beautiful poems eurythmically, then what takes place in
people is not a representing of something mystical but is a
process which definitely makes a person healthy. If one lets
the patient do eurythmy by always telling him to pay
attention to what he is hearing and to be strongly aware of
the sound heard, and of the heard context of the sentence he
is eurythmizing, one will then let him arise to the external
formative forces, to the objective intuiting forces.

If one wants
to work on what are called inborn errors, defects, etc.
(which materialism calls heredity, but a large part of this
was brought along from the pre-existent life of soul and
spirit) then one will do well to work with eurythmy
especially at a young age, by repeatedly challenging the
person doing eurythmy to make very clear to himself what he
is hearing outwardly. In this way one drives away all those
tendencies which want to inwardly fix what may possibly want
to arise into something like mystical drawings or poems. This
focused listening while doing eurythmy is then attached to
the outer, beautiful poem. It is a reverse process. A true
mystic knows that there is always something questionable
about a beautiful object which is a reflection of an
abnormality. On the other hand, if what is beautiful in the
outer world is inwardly experienced, one cannot say that it
presents itself as a particularly great and beautiful figure;
on the contrary, it becomes schematic and abstract in the way
that a drawing is abstract. But precisely this is a healthy
thing, this is what is desired. It is true that this
beautiful, historical process would not have come about
— but if, for example, Mechthild von Magdeburg had been
induced to do eurythmy to some good poems, she would have
been protected from her whole mystical destiny. Of course,
when one gets to this point, one arrives where good and evil
cease to be. One comes to the amoral Nietzsche sphere beyond
good and evil, and of course one should not be narrow-minded
and say that all Mechthild von Magdeburgs should be
destroyed, bones and all. On the other hand, you can be sure
that it is well taken care of from the spiritual worlds,
that, even though man does not let these things proliferate,
the appropriate connections with the super-sensible world
nevertheless remain.

Even though
the hour is late, I would like to go into a few things which
might clarify the following question: — “Could
therapeutic eurythmy exercises be supported by rational
breathing exercises? It does not have to be Hatha Yoga right
away.”— Rational breathing exercises to
supplement eurythmy exercises for present human nature, which
is developing as it is today, can only be treated in the
following way; one will notice that, under the influence of
vowel eurythmy, a tendency to change the breathing rhythm
occurs by itself. This one will notice. Then one is faced
with the difficulty of not forming mental stereotypes or
saying anything in general, but of first observing to come to
insight about what should be done.

In a single
individual case where one wants to help to heal with vowel
eurythmy in accordance with other findings one should observe
the breathing, the change in breathing, and then draw the
patient's attention to it so that he consciously continues
this tendency. For, unlike the old orientals, we can no
longer take the reverse path and influence the whole man
through prescribed breathing. This is something which under
all circumstances leads to inner shocks, whether it is
prescribed in this or that way, and it should be avoided. We
must learn to observe what vowel eurythmy teaches us about
its influence on the breathing process. Then we can
consciously continue what appears eurythmically in the
individual case. From this you will see that the breathing
process is continued in a specifically individual way —
that is, differently in different people.

So this, my
esteemed friends, is about all that could still be answered.
There are a few things we cannot get to because of a lack of
time. In conclusion, my dear friends, I would briefly like to
tell you that you will have to be prepared for the battle
which will proceed just as much from your medical colleagues
in the world, once they become strongly aware that some of
our kind of thinking is asserting itself, and you will
certainly need a strong power of conviction to paralyze what
will come to meet you. Of course, opposition should never
make one stop doing things, but we should also have no
illusions about all the antagonistic forces which will be
stirred up.

At the end of
this course I would again like to say that to make the
movement which is now to be inaugurated in the medical field
possible, I will everywhere strictly adhere to the principle
of not directly intervening in the healing processes of
patients and will only advise the physicians themselves, so
that you will always be in a position to reject suggestions
that I myself have entered into the doctor-patient
relationship in perhaps an unjustified manner. I already said
this at the end of the last course. One should not remain
silent about the fact that this is made extraordinarily
difficult from anthroposophical quarters because, of course,
people come with all kinds of unreasonable demands in this
respect. It is also definitely the case that there is a
tendency among anthroposophists not to get beyond their
egotism but to sometimes get even more egotistical than
normal people, and in some cases, they become highly
indifferent to the well-being of the movement and to the fact
that the well-being of the movement depends on not practicing
what the outer world calls quackery. For a healing process of
all of medicine should occur, and it should not be disturbed
by the demands which individuals sometimes make because of
their personal aspirations. This becomes very difficult, but
it has to be done along these lines. We will succeed in this
area only if in reply to false accusations from the outer
world we can say: what is said there is definitely a lie, it
is definitely made up. We will be able to say this simply
because we know what is going on in the anthroposophical
movement. In certain cases we will simply always have to be
able to say this. However, we can only say this if we are
inwardly initiated into everything which consists of such
things as the ones to which I have drawn your attention here,
namely that I will not directly intervene in therapy, but
that the people who function as physicians within our
anthroposophical movement are there to heal the patients.

In conclusion
I would like to express to you my hope that these beginning
impulses, although still mere indications, may be developed
further by you, and that they become effective for the
well-being of mankind. Hopefully we will have an opportunity
to continue what we have now begun twice, and will at least
make an effort to continue this in some way. With this wish I
close these contemplations, my dear friends, and I hope that
our deeds will correspond to our wishes in all these
directions. It was very satisfying to see you here. It will
be satisfying to think back to the days which you wanted to
stay here, precisely for the enrichment of medical science,
and the thoughts which shall hold us together will accompany
you on the paths, my dear friends, on which you will walk to
transform into deed what to begin with we tried to stimulate
here in thoughts.